


Do Volcanoes Rise From Graves?

by NebulousMistress



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen, M/M, Science, Typical Night Vale Weirdness, Typical Scientist Antics, did the research
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-16
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-21 03:38:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4813520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NebulousMistress/pseuds/NebulousMistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This just in, Night Vale. An extinct volcano on the far edge of the scrublands is erupting. Invisible lava is flooding across the desert. You can't see it but it's just as dangerous as real lava. Luckily you can tell where the lava is by the burning sage brush and the oppressive heat. Residents are being told not to enter the scrublands without proper permitting from the sheriff’s secret police.</p><p>In other news...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Weird

This was weird.

Not the usual weird, but still weird. The usual weird involved all the seismographs around town disappearing or being carried off and set back up in the wrong places by intelligent crows.

To be fair, though, a couple of the crows had good ideas. How anyone, even a crow had managed to get a seismograph into the floor of City Hall's basement Carlos had no idea.

But, no, this was still weird. Over their first year in Night Vale he'd had planted a series of seismographs all around the town and its environs. The giant earthquakes no one seemed to feel had to be traced, after all. Now that seismic network was coming to life again, but this time it wasn't a mysterious 9-point-something that no one felt.

This was... weird. It was so weird in that it was almost normal.

Out in the desert, in the scrublands where the line of basalt plutons and eroded cinder cones stood rotting to time, there came an earthquake swarm. Lots and lots of little earthquakes, 1s and 2s. Not strong enough to be noticed, even if the town could manage to notice an earthquake. Not all at once, not even one after the other, but here and there, popping into a rumble and fading back down.

Normal readings, normal for a specific event that couldn't possibly happen. Of course not, not around here. The nearest plate boundary was a transverse fault and the spreading center to the south was far too distant. This couldn't be real.

Carlos shook himself out of that dangerous thought. Of course it could be real. This was Night Vale.

There was no reason why a volcano couldn't suddenly spring to life here.

 


	2. Like a Forgotten God

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The volcano will not be ignored. And Carlos is ecstatic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: contains science

The ridge of ancient volcanoes stood on a far edge of the scrublands, within sight of a mysterious line of hills that marked the edge of Night Vale's influence. The city council didn't remember the hills were even there, hadn't cared to see that far beyond the edge of town for centuries. No one believed in them, much like trying to believe in a far edge to Radon Canyon or perhaps a single good thing about Desert Bluffs.

Empty of thought and lacking in memory, the line of ancient volcanic corpses waited beyond the edge of perception, of reality. Beneath those great corpses, something awoke. Something half-remembered, something that refused to be forgotten any longer.

 

* * *

 

“Carlos, honey, you know there's no such things as mountains.”

Carlos managed to spare a fond look at Cecil before launching into his tirade.

“Oh, these aren't mountains anymore, Cecil,” he said. “These are their insides, volcanic plugs like what happens when a magma chamber solidifies before the volcano can erupt again. Usually the volcano will just blow up, popping the plug out like a champagne cork. You remember what happened last time, right? The cork hit the ceiling, knocked over the Faceless Old Woman, and flew out the window for the sheriff’s secret police to sniff and then he handed it back through the window saying it wasn't that good, remember? Good thing the champagne had kinda bubbled everywhere, right? And it was kinda fun to clean up.” He cleared his throat, both at the memory and to get himself back on track.

“Anyway, a volcanic plug is really hard basalt because all basalt is really hard, yanno? So it doesn't erode when the rest of the volcano erodes over millions of years after the whole system dies. Well, anyway, out there there's the corpses of a whole line of volcanoes with just their insides sticking out and one of them is rumbling like there might still be magma in it but that's not possible because the magma chamber is sitting right there as a solidified plug that we can see and touch and it's definitely plenty dead. But it doesn't feel like a new volcano, especially since there's an old one right there, right?”

“I have no idea,” Cecil admitted, getting a word in edgewise while Carlos took a breath.

“Maybe it's undead or a ghost or something. But that's silly and unscientific, it has to be something real, even here in Night Vale it has to be something more real. After all, some of the earthquakes are big enough to feel and guess what! Guess what, Cecil. Guess. Guess! We can actually feel them! The ground really rumbles, not just in the sensors and seismographs, it actually makes rumblings we can feel with our feet! There's something really there, Cecil!”

The crowd at Big Rico's was slow today, possibly because pizza was not often considered to be an approved breakfast food. But Carlos had been spending most of his time camping in the scrublands with his team near the rumbling lava plug. He hadn't had a chance to consume his municipally mandated slices of Big Rico's this week and didn't want to face the paperwork.

“And I'm sure it's scientifically interesting,” Cecil said.

“It is! You'd think as a scientist I would have seen something this scientific before and I have, I mean I sort of have, but I've never seen a real living volcano with the cone and the lava and the danger to life and limb before. This is the first time! I mean, Rick has, you know him, he works with me. He studied volcanoes before and even got to poke flowing lava with a stick. Can you imagine? Poking red hot flowing lava with a stick!”

“Poking lava... with a stick.” The idea amused Cecil. This 'lava' didn't seem too dangerous, not if scientists were out there somewhere poking it with sticks. And red hot wasn't always that hot, sometimes it was downright cold. It sounded fun. “We should poke lava with sticks.”

“Yes! We totally should! But only if it's not dangerous, after all volcanoes can be really dangerous things. I just hope this one isn't some sort of explodey one with pyroclastic flows and things, those are really dangerous. Hey Cecil, do you think we could get the hooded figures to build an obsidian wall around the volcano? Just in case it is an explodey version? Otherwise we might all die in a big wall of hot rocks and gases and cooking and broiling and that'd be horrible!”

Cecil listened to his perfect scientist going on and on about these mythical volcanoes. The idea was intriguing, that rock flowed out of the earth. That made sense. The explosions and the ash, the flying boulders and the shrieking death, that made sense too. But this dangerous quality, that was new to him.

He figured he'd just have to wait and see. After all, according to Carlos this volcano thingee was very unpredictable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poking lava... with a stick.
> 
> https://youtu.be/FLPxgcuJAKE


	3. Ominous Hissing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five bucks if you poke it with a stick.

The ground rumbled with tiny earthquakes. A few a week to a few a day to a few an hour. Rick was put in charge of monitoring the site while Carlos was back in town. He had his laptop out, absently fiddling with a game while the seismic readings changed, spreading out into softer, wider waves that rose and fell like music.

Harmonic tremor. The long rumblings of magma moving between rocks, jostling and shoving and breaking and singing. Like pouring hot water on ice cubes, except these ice cubes were the ground itself, breaking and melting far beneath unsuspecting feet, the breaking moving closer, always closer.

An eruption was definite. Soon.

 

* * *

 

“Hmmmm...”

“Hmmmm.”

“Hmmmm?”

“Mmmmhmmmm...”

“Hmmmm...”

Three scientists stood in the middle of the scrublands near the volcanic plug, all staring down the viewfinder of a thermal imaging scanner. Occasionally they'd glance at the ground, maybe kick at what the scanner showed them, then they'd go back to their odd conversation carried entirely in one word.

“Hmmmm...”

“Hmmmm...”

“Hmmmm?”

“Hey guys.”

The other two spared a glare at the one who dared interrupt them with actual words. They followed her pointing to the car that was driving up through the scrublands to park at their staging area.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.”

A figure got out of the car, too far to identify. It looked like it was carrying stuff. It started towards them, slowly traversing the mile and a half of scrubland between the staging area and their strange find.

They went back to looking at the thermal image.

“Hmmmm...”

“Five bucks if you poke it with a stick.”

All hummed in agreement yet no one moved.

“Hmmmm...”

 

* * *

 

Carlos walked up, arms laden. One hand held a gallon jug of water, another arm balancing a short stack of pizza boxes from Big Rico's. It turned out many of his scientists hadn't eaten their quota this week.

Sandra, Mohammed, and Rick were all clustered around a spot on the ground, looking at it with a thermal imager. A chorus of “hmmmm”s greeted him as he approached.

“What's up?” Carlos asked.

Rick showed him the thermal image.

There on the smooth sandy desert ground the thermal image showed a small hot gash a few feet long and maybe a couple of inches wide. But the inside of this gash glowed white hot on the image, well over a hundred degrees Celsius. A small plume of hot gases billowed from this gash only to drift away on air currents.

“It's a fumarole,” Rick said. “But we can't see it. It's definitely there, I mean it's hot and all.”

“Five bucks if you poke it with a stick,” Sandra said.

“How do we actually know it's there?” Carlos asked. “I mean, you remember that house that didn't exist.”

“The house didn't show up on thermal,” Mohammed pointed out.

“True, true.” Carlos resisted the urge to “hmmmm” along with the rest of them. This clearly existed and they didn't have enough data to ponder yet. “Well, I guess we put up a little flag or something so nobody trips on it. Then we'll just treat it like it's real? I'd love to see a gas sample from it.”

Rick nodded then the others followed suit. But first, lunch.

After lunch, Rick crouched with several tiny sealed vials of the gases pulled from the fumarole. He ran one through a field spectrograph to determine what was in it while the others poked at the hole with a stick and 'hmmmm'ed. A small yellow flag waved from a long wire, stuck in the sand near the fumarole.

“It's real,” he announced. “Sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, water vapor, it's definitely real, volcanic, and active.”

Carlos poured a small stream of water from the jug he'd carried out here. It seeped and splashed on the sand before sizzling and boiling as it flowed too close to the fumarole. “Yep,” he agreed. “Well, it's not safe to walk around out here anymore, not without thermal. Maybe we could get the sheriff's secret police to do a fly-over with theirs, that way we can at least get an idea where all the hazards are.”

“How do we prove to them it's hazardous, though?” Sandra asked. “They don't believe in mountains. Do you think they'll believe in volcanoes?”

“They'll believe something's wrong once the cacti start running away.”

“Good point.”

“Okay, everyone, let's head back to the lab. We have stuff to do.”


	4. Depths of Song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Do not try to comfort the sage brush. If it refuses to run then it doesn't deserve comforting.

“Night Vale, I have been asked to inform you all that the scrublands are temporarily off limits. My perfect Carlos has asked that I assure you all not to interfere with the barrel cacti as they roll out of the scrublands. Old Woman Josie reports that it's more than just barrel cacti, most of the cacti seem to be fleeing the scrublands, though the sage brush aren't. Instead they are bundling together into twisted joints and screaming.”

“In related news, any Night Vale resident who can see in infrared is asked to report to Carlos' science lab for important business.”

 

* * *

 

The unmarked blue helicopter drifted lazily in the air above the scrublands. One side was lashed open, a figure dangling half-outside the aircraft. He was harnessed in, mostly, and in no danger of falling. Thermal goggles were fitted over his eyes as he shouted into a headset.

The sagebrush and creosote bushes curled, brown and dead near the volcanic plug. Thermal imaging showed angry fumaroles renting the ground, belching clouds of heat and fury into the clueless wind.

Off in the distance the last few cacti escaped. A pricklypear had pulled itself out of the ground and was using its large green pads like feet as it ran away. A hedgehog cactus had unfurled its many stems into a long prickly line of fleeing as it slithered toward safety. Small barrels and cottonball cacti rolled and bounced, leaping over rocks and confused lizards.

Down on the ground a lone figure picked his way among the fumaroles. He walked with a long stick in front of him, poking the ground to test its safety. Thermal goggles provided data he did not particularly find comfortable. The ground rumbled beneath his feet, harmonic notes that were melding into one singular tone, a song of power and warning.

Rick picked his way through the fumarole fields, holding his latest gas collections in a bag. Carlos's voice rang in his ears from his boss's perch in the sheriff's secret police helicopter. His car was parked not far from here, a few hundred yards from the edge of the furthest fumarole.

He would be glad to get out of here, away from the stench of sulfur and the uneasy feeling of anticipation.

And then...

The ground began to groan, to growl, to shake. The shaking turned to a massive roar.

He dropped his samples and ran.

 

* * *

 

“RUN!!!” Carlos shouted into his headset.

Below him, Rick was running for his life. Here in the sky, Carlos could see exactly what he was running from.

The volcanic plug rent, the ground around it shattering as great fountains of heat drew white lines in his thermal goggles. Lava bombs flew tens, hundreds of meters in the air. Glowing rocks flew everywhere, blobs that splashed and splattered as they hit the desert sand. Gray smoke billowed, lit from within by its heat and without by the deadly glowing fountain.

“We've got to get out of here!” Carlos shouted to the pilot. A terse nod and the helicopter headed away from the fountain, the fire, the volcano. The staging area was a couple of kilometers away, hopefully that would be far enough.

Below them, Rick's car crunched in as a lava bomb impacted with the empty trunk. Hot pebbles cascaded down from the steel, scraping away paint and plastics as Rick bolted past it, running as fast as he could into the empty desert.

The volcano had erupted.


	5. Tongues of Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A key skill for any scientist is to know when to stand your ground looking badass and when to run for your life.

“Oooooo...”

“Ahhhhh...”

“Ohhhhh...”

Carlos tried to shoo away the crowd of totally-not-angels. He was in his lab with some of the digital recordings the sheriff's secret police were able to get him from their wide circles around the volcano. With the scrublands closed off until the safety of the situation could be determined, this was the closest he could get to real data.

The eruption had been going on for only a few hours before Rick burst in the lab door looking like he'd run all the way from the scrublands. He'd then stumbled to their Found Couch and collapsed with a groan and a snore. He was still there, snoring.

If he were awake Carlos would have him looking at this footage. Rick was the rock guy here, he'd know more about this. The volcano was spitting lava up in a smallish fountain that grew every now and again with a boom, a hiss, and a coughing choke of lapilli. A lava flow was creeping across the desert floor, setting fire to the few sage bushes that hadn't been destroyed by the fountain.

The footage turned and focused on a particular feature in the desert. Over the distant thud of the helicopter rotors came a voice in the video. “I guess one of them scientists left their car out here.”

A faint pop and then another sounded on the film.

“I don't think you're gettin' that back.”

Carlos facepalmed as the thermal image of the lava flow crept under the infra-cold car. Those sounds must have been the bursting tires.

“Oooooo...”

“Ahhhhh...”

“Will you lot go away?!” Carlos demanded. “Erika! All you Erikas! This is important sciencey stuff I'm doing!”

The Erikas stepped back but didn't leave, instead choosing to stand as an imposing choir. The choir didn't last long as another explosion popped on the screen and began the ooo-ing and ahh-ing again.

 

* * *

 

Once Rick woke up he was plied with gifts of coffee, pizza, gatorade, and condolences about his car. He accepted the gatorade and the condolences but not much else. Too much running for his life.

It was not the first time he'd run for his life from something volcanic, but it was the first time he'd had to run more than 50 feet for that life. The worst part was the nightmares after the crash, but that would hopefully be tempered by one of Night Vale's more pleasant traditions: drinking to forget.

First, though, he needed to find out what all these angels were ooo-ing and ahh-ing over.

Ah, yes, data.

“It's a strombolian eruption,” Rick finally said after reviewing the couple of hours of footage. “Fairly mild, as far as volcanic eruptions go. It spits and fountains and explodes but generally only in small amounts. They can go on for a really long time, though.”

“How long?” Carlos asked.

“Well, they're named after Stromboli, the island volcano off of Sicily. It's been erupting since... well, since the Romans cared to write about it.”

Carlos pinched the bridge of his nose. “This thing isn't going to erupt for an empire's age, is it?”

“Probably not,” Rick allowed. “Most cinder cones form out of strombolian eruptions. In fact, there's even a lava flow with this one. Also, do you think I could argue that the city council owes me a car?”

Carlos snorted. Another chorus of 'ooo's and 'ahh's echoed from behind him as the volcano exploded again. “You're on your own for that one,” Carlos warned.


	6. Feast of Science

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A scientist is not above bribery.

“The ground is hot, the air is thick, and our eyes can do nothing but scream in terror at the lies before us. Welcome to Night Vale.”

Cecil paused as the show's theme music played. Intern Mark's voice counted down in his ear through the headset, time until the music ended. Cecil wasn't in his recording studio. Instead he was out in the scrublands with the mobile recording unit.

He wasn't alone. Carlos' entire science team was out here. Rick fiddled with infrared equipment, Mohammed taking temperature readings of the ground, Sandra was striking at invisible lava with an iron hammer on the hunt for samples. Farther back Dave was digging a hole.

Intern Mark gave him the cue. “Listeners, many of you have expressed interest in the events here in the scrublands as of late. Screaming, chanting, even asking questions. A most dangerous thing, asking questions. Well, we here at Night Vale Community Radio took it upon ourselves to report on the situation here. Although I must say, listeners, the scrublands look even more dull than usual. The cacti have long since fled, the sage and creosote are burning or have long since burnt away, the sand under the lava has fused to glass, and the extinct volcano that used to stand here has crumbled to rubble.”

“That's not to say it doesn't look fascinating in infrared. From here you can see the spewing fountains shining white and terrible on the thermal image. It's quite far, though perhaps just far enough. Far enough to enjoy, far enough to appreciate, far enough to barely make out the details of the car left abandoned out here when the volcano first erupted. And yet, even this far it's still oppressively hot. Carlos tells me it's from the lava that's only twenty feet from where we're standing right now.”

Hole dug, Dave walked up past them to the lava flow. He tapped the ground in front of him at every step until the scrape of sand was replaced with more of a thunk-ish splut. He dug out a big shovel full of invisible lava. “Hot!” he warned. “Hot hot hot hot hot!” Nobody got in his way as he carried the shovel full of lava to the hole and dumped it in.

“And now some of it is behind us,” Cecil continued. “One of the scientists has dug a hole and dumped a large shovel full of lava into it. It seemed rather heavy... And now he's fitting a grate over the hole. Carlos, what's going on?”

“Hey Cecil,” Carlos said, stepping away from his work. “As you know, today is first day we've been able to drag Rick back out here to the volcano. Well, he refused to come alone and there's something I always wanted to try. And once I talked to everyone else, well, everyone's here, as you can see.”

“And what would that be?” Cecil asked. "Will you be poking the lava with a stick?"

Carlos smiled bashfully. He didn't want to admit it on the air.

He didn't have to. Dave came past them for another shovel full of invisible lava. “Carlos promised us carne asada,” he said.

“You know, we won't need the grate,” Carlos said. “The temperature implies we could just put the flank steaks on the lava. Though I'm not sure any of us wants to taste the glass layer. Maybe a protective layer of aluminum foil? Wait, no, aluminum melts really easy. Hmmm...”

Cecil rolled his eyes and grinned. His perfect Carlos... “You brought them all out here for a lava cookout?” he asked.

“Well you see, Cecil, science is motivated by food. And knowledge. But also food.”

Rachelle nodded as she stuffed a couple of marshmallows onto the end of a stick and held it out over the invisible lava.

“Those are for later!” Carlos scolded. She stuck her tongue out at him. He returned the volley.

“I see...” Cecil said, trailing off. He recovered quickly.

“In other news, Old Woman Josie has complained that the most-definitely-not-angels, who are all named Erika, have taken over her television set. She didn't mention how, merely that every channel seems to be showing a video feed of events here in the scrublands. She says it's very boring since she can't actually see anything but the Erikas are all riveted by what they're watching. The chorus of 'ooo's and 'ahh's is very distracting, says Old Woman Josie, and it's most inconvenient that they won't let her change the channel to something else. Surely there's something else on television, right?”

“The sheriff's secret police would like me to to remind you that the scrublands remain off limits without proper permitting. Any parent looking to allow their child to play in the scrublands is required to follow proper procedure in obtaining a permit for their child. Keep in mind, a permit for exiting the scrublands is also required and that request must be filed separately. I have also been informed that citizens are not eligible for scientific exemption unless they can prove that they are, in fact, currently a scientist.”

“And now, a word from our sponsors.” The live feed switched off, back to the radio station for a prerecorded message. Intern Mark called out 45 seconds.

Dave and Sandra tested the heat in the pit using a variety of tools including an infrared gun, bare hands, and a marshmallow on a stick. After some quick deliberation and gooey marshmallow they decided to line the pit with rocks and set the grate on that.

The sound of a tailgate slamming open signaled the beginning of cooking.

 


	7. Closing

“Listeners, I must say, this has been a most interesting week. An invisible erupting volcano, a mass migration of local cacti, actual earthquakes we could feel, and I even got to poke lava with a stick.”

“Carlos and I are still here, sitting on the tailgate of the lab's truck. The majority of the scientists have collected their data and gone back to town, bellies full good food and lungs full of bad air. The air is rather bad out here, it stinks of sulfur and acid. Carlos is throwing rocks now and then to gauge the location of the lava flow. It's already reached the pit used for cooking, only five feet away. Perhaps we should be leaving soon. After all, feet grow back. Tires do not and I'm sure we'd rather get out of here using tires.”

“Okay, good. Carlos is getting down to finish packing up the equipment. He's getting in the truck...”

“Ah, good. We're off and coming back to town. Well, with that...”

“Stay tuned for the harmonic rumbling of an angry earth followed by static as the microphone I just dropped is swallowed by lava. Good night, Night Vale. Good night.”

Cecil relaxed in the bed of the truck among supplies and equipment as it wound its way across the scrublands. The air warbled in the sunset, heat radiating off the ground in thick waves. If he squinted he could almost see the lava fountain and the growing cinder cone beneath it, all glowing red in the setting sun.

The volcano would be erupting for days, perhaps weeks. None of the scientists thought the lava would ever threaten town, and they would be right. The scrublands would recover, eventually. It would be years before the cacti felt comfortable enough to move back in, but until then the sand wastes would flower.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's fairly short but it's over.
> 
> I admit, I am not a geologist by trade, though I have traveled the desert with one many times. The Mojave is littered with dead cones and deader plugs. Normally they just sit there and get climbed on but this is Night Vale and the mountain is tired of being disbelieved.


End file.
